American History Revised is a book by Seymour Harris Jr. detailing some
historical accounts which have been omitted from textbooks and many other
history books.
In a chapter titled “Forgotten by History” he writes: “In 1506 a compilation of Vespucci’s letters
was published in pamphlet form, titled ‘The Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci’.
For the next twenty-five years, it was a bestseller, published in some forty
editions, and outselling the dull journals of Columbus by three to one. In 1507
a book of geography appeared, Cosmographiae Introductio, identifying the new
continent as ‘America’. The author eventually realized that Vespucci’s claims
of discovery were false and soon removed the name America, but by then it was
too late: Vespucci’s bestseller had won the day... History is brutal in who
becomes famous and doesn’t. Said Theodore Roosevelt after leaving office in
1910, ‘If there is not the great war, you don’t get the great general’”,
(P. 34-35). And that is how America became the title of a continent and the
name of fifty plus united states and territories which geographically occupies
a landmass that makes it one of the largest countries in the world, with the
greatest power in technology and military.
